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This makes sense from a business perspective. If your primary customers are men, you wanna branch out of that real quick. I think something like ~80% of all con

This makes sense from a business perspective. If your primary customers are men, you wanna branch out of that real quick. I think something like ~80% of all consumer spending in the US is done by women. You gotta go after that. That's an ENORMOUS market to just leave on the table. That said, I fail to see how trying to attract more women alienated men. I just don't buy that culture war as a reason. I remember Nike doing some things that were a bit annoying that I wished they would just stay out of, but I still bought their shoes. The only thing more insufferable than the culture war is taking part in said culture war.

nater5000 12d ago
>I fail to see how trying to attract more women alienated men It's less about Nike making decisions that men don't like and more about Nike spreading themselves too thin. Just think about Nike as a company: the products they actually sell are generic, barely mid-tier clothes and athletic gear. Their actual product is their brand. That's why all of their products prominently display their iconic logo and everyone and their grandma knows their slogan is "Just do it." A brand is only as valuable as the awareness of the brand. So every dollar that Nike spends on marketing is incredibly important for driving their bottom line. If you split those marketing dollars in an attempt to reach a new audience, you're necessarily spending less of those marketing dollars on the existing audience that found your brand valuable. So, in trying to attract more women, Nike ended up attracting less men. The question, really, is how important is this dynamic. Apparently, it's pretty important. I don't think Nike made a blunder in attempting to expand their audience. I'm willing to bet that they started seeing some writing on the walls which suggested not doing anything was going to be bad enough that taking the risk to spread themselves thin was appropriate. But at the end of the day, I think modern consumerism moves too fast and is so much less concentrated than it was in the past (when Nike dominated) that they just couldn't keep everything together as effectively as they needed to.

nater5000 12d ago

>I fail to see how trying to attract more women alienated men It's less about Nike making decisions that men don't like and more about Nike spreading themselves too thin. Just think about Nike as a company: the products they actually sell are generic, barely mid-tier clothes and athletic gear. Their actual product is their brand. That's why all of their products prominently display their iconic logo and everyone and their grandma knows their slogan is "Just do it." A brand is only as valuable as the awareness of the brand. So every dollar that Nike spends on marketing is incredibly important for driving their bottom line. If you split those marketing dollars in an attempt to reach a new audience, you're necessarily spending less of those marketing dollars on the existing audience that found your brand valuable. So, in trying to attract more women, Nike ended up attracting less men. The question, really, is how important is this dynamic. Apparently, it's pretty important. I don't think Nike made a blunder in attempting to expand their audience. I'm willing to bet that they started seeing some writing on the walls which suggested not doing anything was going to be bad enough that taking the risk to spread themselves thin was appropriate. But at the end of the day, I think modern consumerism moves too fast and is so much less concentrated than it was in the past (when Nike dominated) that they just couldn't keep everything together as effectively as they needed to.